Small enterprise owners complete business training

A TOTAL of 45 small businesses cutting across various sectors of the economy have completed a one-week intensive training in business planning to enable them to successfully develop, ran and grow their businesses.

The participants are winners of the annual UT Bank Enablis Business Launchpad Competition 2012 organised by Enablis Ghana and sponsored by some corporate organisations, led by UT Bank.

The entrepreneurs, which included start-up businesses, were taken through topics such as finance, marketing, human resource development and the essence of business plans. 

Organisers of the competition, Enablis Ghana, said the competition was aimed at creating an opportunity for anyone with a business idea or an existing business that found it difficult to secure conventional funding to be considered for access to start-up or expansion funding.

The Country Director of Enablis Ghana, Ms Shika Acolaste, explained at the graduation ceremony of the entrepreneurs in Accra that the competition sought to promote entrepreneurship by encouraging people with great business ideas to turn them into thriving businesses.

“It is to encouraging entrepreneurs to sharpen their business acumen, improve their business writing skills; showcasing the winning entrants as role models to encourage other people to become entrepreneurs; facilitating the provision the provision of funding to entrepreneurs who meet the criteria of the competition’s funding partners and creating opportunities for gainful employment and furthering the country’s economic growth,” she said.

The Managing Director of Accra Brewery Limited, Mr Gregory Metcalf, also noted that entrepreneurship was the fuel that drove economic growth in a developing country.

The competition process, which started last year, evaluates all entries and scores them on the basis of their business viability and suitability in terms of the funding criteria of the competition’s funding partners.

As part of the process, the competitors are assisted to refine and focus on their business ideas.

Besides the title sponsor, UT Bank, other supporters of the competition include Accra Brewery , SIC Insurance Ltd, Sikkens, Business & Financial Times, BT Magazine and Joy FM.

The rest are Tropical Cable & Conductor, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, DDP Outdoor Ltd., and Graphicolor Printing Ltd.

“Entrepreneurs provide new income to the economy, employment opportunities and sometimes even export revenues,” Mr Metcalf said, while congratulating Enablis for the laudable initiative of creating the platform for development.

Enablis is a membership-based organisation that believes that the entrepreneur is the key to successful small and medium enterprises. The programme was launched at the G-8 meeting in 2002 and officially founded in 2003 as a Canadian-based organisation, which focuses on driving measurable social and economic development by supporting entrepreneurs.

In early 2006, Enablis was deemed a charitable organisation in Canada. Enablis launched its first West African office in Accra in October 2009.

A participant, Mr Linga Marful, told the Graphic Business that the opportunity to participate had been wonderful, exciting and an eye-opener.

“It’s been like a mirror for me to really actualise my business concept. It has taught me so many things I did not think of, many of which I could never have acquired with experience,” he said.